


Veins full of disappearing ink

by Siren_whispers



Category: Glee
Genre: Depression, Gen, I'm Sorry, M/M, No Dialogue, Sad, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-23 23:17:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18158339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siren_whispers/pseuds/Siren_whispers
Summary: Burt said the Glee club saved his kid's life.  He wished it was an exaggeration.Potential trigger warning for suicidal thoughts/feelings but there is no actual death.





	Veins full of disappearing ink

He was going to wake up.

It was a reality he had to face every time he laid his head to rest on the pillow and shut his eyes to block out the glare of the lights.

He was going to wake up and there would be eyes that glared like lights and lights that glared like eyes.  There would be words that bruised like punches and punches that bruised like words. There would be loneliness that suffocated like claustrophobia and claustrophobia that suffocated like loneliness.

But he was going to wake up.

 

He knew it was bad when he had to reassure himself that he didn't have to bid the sun and moon and stars and earth and sky goodnight before he shut his eyes and let himself sink into the land of vivid imagery and intangibility that was kept behind them.  He didn't have to say goodbye. They would be there again and again and again, too many times to count.

_ He was going to wake up. _

**He didn't want to wake up.**

_ He was going to wake up. _

 

If all he ever did was sing and swallow confessions and retorts and everything that that made him doubt sunrise and sleep, he was going to wake up.  He would wake up and wonder whether the pain in his chest, lungs, and soul was from the sobs he stifled, the words he belted like they would swallow him whole if he let them stay with him, the knuckles that knocked on his ribcage and waited for his heart to answer, or the knowledge it would all happen again.

All he knew was that his chest and back was were mottled with purple and blue and yellow that shifted and danced and never seemed to leave, the glee club wasn't perfect but he could be someone there, he seemed to let the teartracks dry in place too long, and  _ he was going to wake up _ .

 

He told himself that even if he didn't want to believe it.  He waited until he was given the all clear to stop believing.  Sometimes it felt like he was given exactly that but he couldn't let his dad, so gruff of exterior yet soft of heart, find the sticky remains of what tried to be so perfectly stitched together.  He couldn't let his dad wake up from the world of life support to find his support system non existent.

He couldn't imagine Finn in black or Carol with a mourner’s veil or his dad kneeling next to his mother's grave but being there for a different resting place.

 

_ He was going to wake up. _

 

_ He was going to wake up. _

 

He was going to wake up and wake up and wake up and wake up and do it all until he was more bright eyes than sleep and everything stopped being pretend.  He was going to wake up if it meant hating every second of it because Blaine couldn't trade primaries for no colour at all, and Puck couldn't sit still through a eulogy, and Santana couldn't keep her mask on when she lost something, and Rachel belonged in her ridiculous reindeer jumpers, and  _ nobody  _ belonged at a kid's closed casket.

 

_ He was going to wake up. _

 

Not for himself, but for the people that touched his soul and turned a concept into a person, and let individuality exist with as bright of a spark as he wanted it to have.  For the people that nurtured hid nature when he was desperate to cast it away. He wanted to replace the sense of being and pride and person that had fallen out of him with every hit, leaving only a numbing kind of emptiness, with something that wouldn't get beaten out of him.  He wanted to cover the goosebumps on his arms with a cocky smile and a deep voice but he couldn't because the thing with façades was that they fell and only ever hurt more in the end because you cannot maintain the disguise but also cannot remember who or what you were before it.  Putting up a façade was accepting an end in oblivion where you swam aimlessly no matter what you chose from there. Putting on a façade meant he could become Brittney, Tina, Artie, Sam, Mercedes, Quinn, or Mike, but never again could he be Kurt.

 

_ He was going to wake up. _

He was going to be himself when he woke up.

**He didn't want to.**

 

There was a darkness that consumed the faces he looked at, an emptiness behind eyes that promised to be smiling but did no such thing.  There were words that his friends would never say but that were sung loudly in their voices. And the words and the dark blurred and blurred until he didn't have friends, he had smudges instead.  Smudges that danced and sung in voices that weren't theirs or anyone else's.

 

So he did it again.  He couldn't promise he was going to wake up so he tried to fill his hollow chest cavity with assuredness as he plastered a smile that sat at an odd angle and seemed to melt a little time every time he tried to fix it onto his face and strode with all of the confidence in the world past Emma Pillsbury's office.

There were always pamphlets lined up perfectly neat rows in a little storage unit right outside the door.  In that moment and that vicinity there was no red headed counselor so he kept walking, long, fast-paced strides on shaking legs he didn't think could hold him up much longer. 

He walked right past the rows of pamphlets and, without looking, picked one up.  He knew it was the right one. He had seen them outside the office so many times, always in the exact same place, and always calling his name as if to remind him to remember he was going to wake up or to convince him to drop the bullshit philosophy.

 

Emma had caught him looking at one similar before but, even when she returned and found some missing, she wouldn't know whose back pocket was burning up with the knowledge that something else, something that wasn't his brain that dipped and dived and contradicted until his own face was as much a blur as any other, was telling him  _ he was going to wake up. _

 

**He hated waking up.**

 

Burt Hummel knew his son was dragging secrets around the house, weighing himself down with thoughts and feelings and knowledge that morphed into anvills and made him forever stronger and harder to break.  But he didn't know what the secrets were.

 

Until he did.

 

**He wished he didn't.**

 

But there it was.  Printed in ink and tears and the knowledge he had failed as a parent.  He hadn't meant to find it but he had and he had called the counselor and tried to pretend he could let Kurt out of his sight without having to check there was nothing there that could hurt his precious son who was so much like his mother.

 

It was true that overtime the Glee club saved his son's life: the music was back in key and the features back in focus.  It was true. But it could still sometimes be difficult to remember that Kurt had stopped letting his persistent existence be defined by the need of others.  Sometimes Burt just had to remind himself.

 

_ He was going to wake up. _


End file.
